Raindrops and Mirrorballs
by mynameislizzie3
Summary: It can be hard at Uni. Separated and in a completely new environment. The threads that connect us can thin...even break.


**Yeah I know...its been a while. An enormous, continent wide, historically significant while. The few hundred people who still visit FF in the hope of catching a few scraps of Naomily are probably split into two camps. Those who couldn't give a damn if I showed up again and those who still check in from time to time to see if anyone talented has added to or created new stories.**

**Sorry to disappoint. Its just me. Once pretty prolific, if limited in ability. **

**Blame boredom...blame extra time on my hands (I broke both legs in a car accident a month ago and the immobility caused by by that has made me re-evaluate my 'spare' time). It'll be another month till I'm properly mobile, so its either write or take up model train sets, and I'm shit at electronics. Oh, and re reading the truly great old stories still up on the site has fired up my imagination a treat. So thanks, Hypes, Goldflecks, Godlesshippie, emilionaomikins mswitsend & co. I'd truly forgotten how wonderful the world of Naomily was/is.**

**So...a new story. Not just regurgitated old stuff found on my hard drive.(Is it called a hard drive now its on an iPad?) **

**As is my wont, its angsty (very) as well as eventually romantic. Feel free to constructively criticise, slag off or just plain ignore. There may not be many of you left, but you're still entitled to an opinion. If its shit, I apologise in advance. **

**Here goes then…**

Naomi

Rain

Cold, persistent, relentless West Country rain

Pouring down so fucking hard its actually bouncing off the icy pavement and covering my new black and shiny boots in small droplets of clear liquid. Like little mirrors, each one reflecting my utter, abject misery. Its bitterly cold too. The sort of cold I thought only Bristol specialised in.

Late December cold.

But apparently Bath is just as frigid when the wind blows off the Severn estuary. Not that I'm actually spending any real time worrying about the weather, inconvenient and uncomfortable as it is. I have other...even less pleasant...things to think about.

The grey, concrete bus shelter which is at least preventing the rest of my body being soaked and frozen is echoingly empty apart from yours truly and some deeply unpleasant graffiti. Not very surprising at 11 o clock on a Friday night, the week before Christmas. Local kids and students from the Uni a few hundred metres down the road have more sense than to be out on the streets in this monsoon. A few taxi's have splashed past the shelter since I've been here. My red rimmed eyes have registered the pale faces staring incuriously from the side windows at the shivering blonde girl in black boots and a coat definitely too insubstantial for a winters night, hugging herself, but they have places to go...people to see, alcohol to be drunk and fumbling, adolescent sex to look forward to.

As soon as the word sex entered my head, I felt my throat close up again. Sex...yeah, the cause of most of the angst in this fucked up world, second only to religion. Sex was the reason I was sitting here shivering, rather than lounging in the student accommodation in the university residence halls with a large alcoholic drink in one hand and a warm and pliable Emily Fitch in the other.

Because sex is the very thing which has shattered my dreams forever.

Not sex with Emily though. My head throbs malevolently and my eyes fill with fresh tears as the events of the past hour replay in my mind like a cruel newsreel loop. No matter how hard I try, my inner projectionist keeps sticking the same awful footage on repeat. I can almost imagine a sadistic chuckle as the projector whirls into life again. I shake my head so hard, anyone passing would think I'm trying to twist it off my shoulders, but I'm past caring, even if there was a crowd of riveted onlookers crouching in the rain to watch me squirm.

Which there isn't.

My mind wanders back unbidden to a time before this evening turned from nervous anticipation, to cold reality.

Bath Spa station...grumpily getting off the crowded train amongst the throng of chattering and excited fellow holiday travellers. The last train into Bath from Paddington. I'd barely made it out of London. Leaving my own student accommodation at Goldsmiths, I was at least ten minutes later than I'd intended and the tube was crammed. But then, the whole trip had been unintended really. I was _supposed_ to come down here next week. Emily had suggested Wednesday when I Facetimed her earlier in the week. Only a day before the Christmas term ended, She was going to sneak me into her halls on some pretence, allowing us to spend the night in her single bed, making love over and over again before we caught the early train back to Bristol;. Me to my mums, her to the Fitch house. But one night enjoying her company had seemed way too meagre to me before we had to endure our own family imposed hell over the two week break.

So I decided at the last moment, after several lonely bottles of beer in my room once I'd finished my last paper of term, to surprise her. Pack a weekend bag, dress up in something which would make those gorgeous brown eyes widen, then darken with lust.

I'd taken care over what I put on tonight. Not like me at all. Instead of the shapeless, grey Uni sweatshirt and jeans I normally wore, I trashed my wardrobe for something that would make those dark eyes sparkle. A tight red tube top with sequins scattered over it, showing enough of my modest tits to make a certain horny little Fitch's mouth water and slim Fitch fingers flex in anticipation. A short (way too short for winter in a Bath bus shelter) black stretchy skirt, as tight as the top and showing enough leg to make me agonise over the choice for several minutes in front of my mirror. Stockings too, dark and sheer. I _never_ wear fucking stockings...I mean, who does? Except I figured that it might be a real show stopper once Emily had found the fancy lace edging on the hold ups not if, but _w__hen_ she slipped a curious hand under my skirt. Then the new black boots. High on my calf, finishing at knee height and not exactly comfortable, but hey...I may not be a glamorous Katie Fitch girl, but even _I_ know occasionally you have to suffer for your art?

All in all, I thought I looked pretty hot, with my hair up and that slim gold necklace Emily bought me on my birthday round my neck. Enough to widen those expressive eyes….?

Well...they widened alright. Wide as wide can be. When I pushed past the slim girl with vivid green hair leaning against Emily's door in the student halls pretending to be smoking a cigarette that wasn't even lit, I expected my girl to be studying. She'd told me she had a last paper of her own to finish before the weekend.

And I fucking believed her.

Green hair girl had resisted slightly when I went to push past her, eyes wide and alarmed, but I was too excited about seeing Emily to snap at her for being in the way. She said something low and urgent too...but again, my ears weren't in receiving mode. The door swung open as I pushed inside and I wrinkled my brow at the almost complete darkness in there. The brightly lit narrow corridor had been filled with bodies travelling in different directions. Some carrying course work, some bottles and glasses. Christmas was a week away, but it looked like a few of the students were starting early. Maybe Emily had finished her paper and was in an other room, I thought with a slight twist of annoyance?

My hand groped for a light switch inside the bedroom. Might as well dump my bag before going to look for her... Then I heard a quick rustle of movement and as my finger finally found the switch, a voice I knew as intimately as my own, husked from the direction of where I vaguely remembered a single bed.

"_Fuck'__s sake__ Crystal...I asked you to stop anyone coming in...wh__o the fu__..."_

And then the overhead fluorescent tube light clicked on, bathing the small room in its harsh, unforgiving glare.

My eyes stared, but my brain completely refused to compute the signals they were being sent.

On the crumpled bed, Emily..._my_ Emily...was kneeling sideways on to the door. I had a second to register she was almost naked from the waist up. Just that pink bra with small, white polka dots I remembered her buying when she visited me in London at Easter. The clasp of the pretty bra was undone, flopping against the ivory skin of her back.

And kneeling opposite Emily was another girl. Dark haired, olive skin, big eyes, staring brazenly at me with something like anger. _She_ was completely naked from the waist up, full breasts pressing against the ones I thought I was the only one to ever touch.

I had a second to notice both their lips were puffy..._like people who had been snogging the face off each other..._my inner demon taunted mercilessly.

Shock is a funny thing. It must have been 5 full seconds before any of us reacted. My mouth, still slightly open as I'd mentally rehearsed my lame opening line, simply refused to operate. They stared at me and I stared at them.

Then the dam broke.

"_Naomi_…?" Emily gasped as I carried on staring, her face frozen in almost comical surprise.

The other girl wasn't so slow on the uptake. I saw her eyes quickly flick from me to the bedside cabinet. The place I knew Emily kept that A4 sized picture of us from Goa. The one where we were posing side by side on a kneeling elephant. The one where we were so fucking happy, I thought I might just burst with joy. But the picture frame was ominously lying face down. If that's not a metaphor for what I was seeing, I don't know what is. As if my face would make Emily think twice about...

And that single look from the bitch still pressed against her told me that whoever this...cunt...was...she certainly knew who_ I _was.

Or had been.

"_Surprise_" I croaked finally. It was what I had been planning on saying, hoping to catch Emily with those adorable reading glasses that she hated hanging off her cute little nose nose, crouched cross legged over a pile of books and course papers.

My voice was scratchy...weak as a distant recording.

Well...it was certainly a surprise. I was right about that.

Then the suspension in reality ended. Emily reached round with one hand and snatched at her bra strap, trying frantically to re clip it, while shooting me frantic glances as she hunted with her other hand for what I assumed was her discarded top. The other girl carried on looking at me...almost triumphantly. I never wanted to punch someone so much in my entire life. Not even Michael Gove...Her full tits swung insolently as Emily finally grabbed a red top and clutched it to her own chest. I hated on the smirking girl some more for being so fucking... nonchalant... about being caught shagging...or very much about to shag, someone else's girlfriend.

_M__y_ fucking girlfriend

"Naomi...it's not...I mean...**fuck**, can you just give me a...a...?" Emily spluttered, her face wan and sickly.

What she was asking for I had no idea, a minute, an hour?...Maybe long enough to finish what she'd started? Whatever... the thought of spending another minute in that room almost made me projectile vomit up on the spot.

I reached into my bag with a shaking hand. Even as I did it, I remembered that night in Freddie's shed, the one where I'd poured my heart out to her and all my friends at long last...admitting it had _always_ been her, that I'd loved her since, well forever…. That night I'd reached into my bag for another reason. Pulling out the tickets to Goa I'd feared for a long, long time we would never use. At least not together.

But tonight, it was something else I hunted for with cold fingers. Under the lipstick, the mobile phone and my purse was the thing I'd intended to give her for Christmas. A watch, gold and delicate. A watch to replace the one she'd broken when she stood on it in my bedroom, one night back in Bristol when the only time we got up was when we were groggy with endless sex and needed water or vodka.

But this watch was way more expensive than the Timex she'd totalled with her heel.

Even more expensive because of the tiny inscription I'd got a jeweller in Hatton Garden to engrave on it last week.

'_For my love, __all __the time in the world _'

Wrapped in its velvet lined box and silky gold paper, it was the present I knew she would treasure forever.

Well, that turned out to be a sick joke, I thought briefly.

Pulling it free, I watched as Emily struggled to keep the rumpled top against her chest and try get off the bed with legs that didn't seem to want to obey her, all at once. There was a single fleeting ironic thought flashing in my head as I watched her. Since when did she _ever_ hide her nakedness from me? I'd seen every single millimetre of her...every part of her body, inside and out.

I shook my head as her mouth opened to say something. What the fuck could she possible say?

My hand gripped the small oblong package and I raised it so she could see it.

"Happy Christmas Em" I grated, my throat tightening so that the words sounded high pitched...strangled.

Then I threw it at her. Hard. It caught her endways on, right on the shoulder, bouncing off onto the floor. The last image I had of my 'girlfriend' was a wince of pain.

And then I fled.

As I burst into the corridor, I could hear Emily regaining the power of speech behind me.

"**Naomi**!….No...n..n..n..**No** Naomi...please...I...lo..."

I pushed my way past the gaggle of semi interested students watching the drama unfold, tears making my eyes sting as I swallowed the sobs which were threatening to overwhelm me. I had to get out...away...anywhere.

XXX

Which is why I'm sitting here. Alone at a bus stop in a city I hardly know. It's probably too late for a bus...let alone a train to get me back to...well, not London. My lonely Goldsmith's digs aren't very welcoming at the best of times. Bristol then. My mum's house is the only bolt hole I would feel safe in right now. But like I said...the buses have been non existent...and the later it gets, the less likely any will stop here. I think about flagging down a passing cab, but every one of those I've seen has been crammed with happy faces. In any case, the station will be deserted. There won't be any trains till morning either.

I shiver with a combination of cold and misery. A night out in a bus shelter isn't very pleasant at the best of times, but it was all I had. I huddled into the corner of the hard plastic seating, wrapping my insubstantial wool coat round my knees as I curl up into myself. At least I was out of the rain…? I shut my eyes and tried to think of anything but that miserable loop of memory.

The word '_Why?_' kept exploding in my head, but I was way too angry and devastated to deal with _that_ part of it yet.

It was a couple of minutes later that I heard a car pull up. Great, I thought bleakly. Its either a middle aged bloke, mistaking me for a 'working girl' or a car load of pissed up lads, hoping to get lucky with a stupid blonde on her own in a shelter.

Turned out it was neither.

I opened my eyes as the car door slammed, tensing in case I had to fight or flight.

Then I saw who it was.

He was tall and sandy haired...my age, I guess. A pale faced stared at me from the front of the shelter. The rain carried on pelting down.

"N...Naomi?" he said slowly.

My face must have registered the mixture of suspicion and fear I was feeling, because he smiled kindly as I carried on staring at him.

"I'm Sam" he said brightly. "I let you into the halls of residence earlier on?"

Vaguely I remembered a tall guy holding the door open for me as I got to the entrance...but how…?

"Uh...I know Crystal…green hair? Friend of my ex, Laura? She said you were...uh, visiting someone...on the third floor?"

OK, that's how he knew my name, but what the fuck was _he_ doing looking for me out here?

"What's it to you?" I said flatly. He might know my sorry life story, but what did he want?

"Look" he said, brushing wet hair from his eyes. The rain was flattening it on his head as the downpour continued "...mind if I sit down for a sec...at the other end?"

I was still suspicious, but the poor fucker was getting drowned. Unlike me, he didn't even have an outer coat, just a blue denim shirt which was darkening rapidly as the rain soaked it through.

I nodded shortly. A good three feet away was just about acceptable. He smiled again and sat at the other end of the shelter, wiping raindrops from his face. He looked harmless, but you can never be too careful, right?

He took out a handkerchief and wiped his hands and forehead before looking back at me.

"Right well...I can understand you being a bit wary,...but I promise I haven't killed any blonde hitch hikers in...oh...weeks?"

I didn't return his smile. Ted fucking Bundy was a proper gent, according to the few victims who survived his attacks.

He sighed patiently and rubbed his palms together for warmth.

"OK...cards on the table. I was at the female halls to pick up some stuff from my ex...Laura?"

I nodded

"We broke up last week and she, uh... insisted I collect anything I'd left at her room, like tonight?" He sighed and I saw the sort of expression on his face I had no doubt I was wearing too. She _dumped_ your arse., I thought. It's written all over you. Like it is on me.

"Welcome to the losers club pal" I said bitterly.

"Yeah..." he said levelly "...ain't **that** the truth?"

"But that doesn't explain..." he gestured at his car and me.

"No, it doesn't" I said slowly "But I'm not really in the market for rebounds _quite_ yet mate?"

It came out angry and harsh, but I guess that wasn't a surprise to him.

He laughed, but it was the sort of laugh you utter when the jokes on you.

"OK...I'm here because Crystal asked me to look for you. I guess whatever you found upstairs wasn't quite what you planned for tonight?" he asked

This time I laughed bleakly.

"No shit Sherlock...Finding your partner of two years playing tonsil tennis with some skank...half fucking _naked_ isn't quite what I had in mind for our Christmas happy reunion?"

He ducked his head, then shook it slowly.

"Yeah, I guessed as much. I didn't think Emily…."

My eyes widened as he said her name. What the actual fuck?

"Wait...you KNOW her?...if **she's** sent you out here to find me, you can get to fuck right now…."

Other words...angry, bitter words were trying to force their way out of my throat, but I choked on them as he shook his head violently.

"No...n...no, that's not it at all. I hardly know her, except to maybe nod to her in lectures. But Laura and Crystal know her quite well, that's it really?"

He swallowed and carried on before I could give him another volley.

"There aren't any buses after 11...or trains...and, well... spending the night in a shelter smelling like a toilet isn't much fun...Crystal tried to catch up with you, but you were gone before she got to the ground floor. That's when she saw me. She's always been a nice girl, helped me out when Laura..well, you know?

I shrugged. All well and good, but I couldn't help taking out some more bitterness on him.

"When she's not acting as lookout for unfaithful girlfriends...that sort of nice, yeah?"

He had the grace to flinch.

"Yeah...that wasn't her finest hour. I think she just sort of..."

I shook my head. Whatever the reason this Crystal had ridden shotgun for my unfaithful ex, it was hardly important now, was it?

"Doesn't matter anyway. Emily cheated, I caught her. End of stupid love story"

The guy sighed and I regretted being so hard on him.

"Look" I said eventually "It's nice of you to care about what happens to me...and I suppose I should thank Crystal too for press ganging you into coming out in this fucking cloudburst to find me, but like you said...there aren't any buses. I'll just have to wait it out, get the first bus into town, then catch the early train?"

He shook his head.

"I was gonna suggest I drop you at the all night cafe next to the station? At least its warm and dry...the coffee's shit, but the woman who runs it is pretty OK. She'll make sure you don't get hassled by any drunks too…?"

"Why should you bother?" I snapped "..We're complete strangers. You've found me, I haven't jumped off a bridge, which will soothe the conscience of my.. lying _bitch_ of an ex"

I could feel my voice rising in pitch, but I couldn't stop the surge of hatred I felt for Emily. I'd spent the last hour just going over and over the moment I'd caught her in the act of betrayal, but now bitterness and anger were starting to take over.

He shrugged.

"You're right...I have no skin in this game, but I'm a human being, Naomi. Emily's turned your life to shit..I get that. I know just how hard it can be to deal with cheating"

His eyes looked sad as he stared at me. Ah, I thought...kindred spirits then.

I sighed in defeat. What did I have to lose?.

"Look, I'm sorry for taking my anger out on you. You've been kind...and yeah, if you can drop me at this all night cafe...well, I'll be proper grateful?"

XXX

Ten minutes later, we were pulling up outside a brightly lit, if tatty 24 hour diner. Through the window, I could see the usual suspects occupying a couple of tables. An old guy with a white beard nursing a tea cup, staring into space...a nurse..probably coming off a late shift, standing at the counter with a styrofoam coffee container, smiling at something the woman behind the counter was saying.

I sighed...it was good of this Sam guy to get me this far...I reached into my pocket to offer him some petrol money, then remembered that in my haste to reach Emily, I'd totally forgotten to draw out any cash tonight.

Fuck, I thought. Sam watched me as I rummaged for a spare note I might have forgotten.

"Shit...I just realised I haven't got any cash on me...if you could drop me at the nearest cashpoint, I'll sort you out some money for petrol…?"

He shook his head.

"Cashpoints are in the station and the barriers will be up by now. The other ones are further into town...but please...don't worry about paying me. It's really not necessary. How about I buy you a coffee instead?"

I shook my head almost violently.

"No Sam...you've been more than kind. I can't..."

He opened his door and walked around to my side of the car, opening mine and indicating I should get out.

"Fuck off...its a cup of coffee for Christ's sake, Naomi...its quite nice to play the gallant gentleman for once...anyway, maybe a chat with a stranger might be better than sitting looking at the local homeless spend two hours over a cold tea. Come on..."

After thinking about if for a couple of seconds, it seemed churlish to refuse. Anyway, standing in the relentless rain, he was getting soaked all over again. I climbed out and followed him into the diner.

XXX

**...and that's it for Ch 1. Next one will be this weekend….and from Emily's POV. Cheating...Emily? WT Actual F!**


End file.
